From the “everybody breathes out poison” department. WUWT reader “Hell_Is_Like_Newark” writes:
The Center for Biological Diversity has issued a petition to get CO2 listed as a toxic substance. CO2 will join the ranks of dioxin, cyanide, etc.
For Immediate Release, June 30, 2015
Legal Petition Urges EPA to Save Sea Life, Regulate CO2 as Toxic Substance
WASHINGTON— With the world’s oceans and sea life facing an unprecedented crisis from ocean acidification, the Center for Biological Diversity and former Environmental Protection Agency scientist Dr. Donn Viviani today formally petitioned the Obama administration to regulate carbon dioxide under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act. The first-of-its-kind petition under the toxics act seeks widespread reduction of CO2 because it contributes to ocean acidification, driving the destruction of coral reefs and threatening nearly every form of sea life, from tiny plankton to fish, whales and sea otters.
“Time’s running out to avoid a mass extinction of wildlife in our oceans,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center. “It may not look like a toxic chemical, but when there’s too much CO2 in the ocean, it turns seawater corrosive and dissolves the protective shells that marine animals need to survive.”
The oceans absorb more than 22 million tons of CO2 each day, and on average the oceans are 30 percent more acidic now than at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Harm from ocean acidification is already observable: It has killed billions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest; severely dissolved the shells of pteropods, a butterfly-like plankton, off the coast of California; and impaired the growth of corals in Florida and the Caribbean. And with CO2 levels rising, the dangers to our oceans will become more severe.
“We’re asking the EPA to prevent ocean acidification now by regulating CO2 emissions under the same law that helped reduce the chlorofluorocarbons that were causing the ozone hole. We’ve solved big environmental problems before and our petition shows the EPA a path to take bold action and leadership to save our oceans,” Dr. Viviani said.
The petition seeks to regulate CO2 as a chemical substance under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which has been used in the past to regulate harmful chemicals such as PCBs and asbestos. The law requires the EPA to regulate chemicals that present an unreasonable risk to the environment and conduct testing for harmful effects of chemicals that are produced in large quantities. The novel approach of using the Act to regulate CO2 could complement other efforts to reduce the CO2 emissions that are contributing to ocean acidification.
Under the Act the EPA has broad authority to require polluters to reduce emissions, keep records, sequester or take back chemicals produced. There are many industries that are not achieving the greatest CO2 reductions available through energy conservation and existing technology, and EPA action under this landmark law could implement many cost-effective CO2 reductions.
“Future generations will look back and wonder why we didn’t do everything we could to save the world’s oceans,” Sakashita said. “Failure to act is a decision to let our sea life die off and disappear. We can’t let that happen.”
Source: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/ocean-acidification-06-30-2015.html
Note: A couple of commenters made some inappropriate remarks in comments, and a total of three inappropriate comments were removed, and one snipped with a notice due to it being a call to action to contact the writer of the press release. Because of that, I’m closing comments. The contact info published in the original press release has also been removed. Part of the problem had to do with formatting of the original press release, it contained the contact info and phone number right at the top. I reproduced it exactly as it appeared on The Center for Biological Diversity PR page.
For future releases, The Center for Biological Diversity might want to consider using the normally accepted formatting practice of ending the PR with a centered
### or a –30- (as is standard press release convention)
…and put that contact info AFTER those delineators at the end of the PR, which would signal users of the PR that the information contained after those are NOT part of the press release and not to be published.
Apologies to Ms. Sakashita for any inappropriate comments and emails she may have received due to commenter making a call to action – Anthony Watts
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Insane.
[snip call to action – inappropriate -mod]
I tried but as yet I have received no confirmation of delivery which is normally immediate.
I hope you have the correct address ColA
CoIA,
I hope it’s not just you and me.
Emailed, politely correcting the errors of their way.
Thanks. Eamon.
Are we sure this isn’t an Onion style spoof?
Complete Nutters.
Although it gives them the opportunity to tax breathing.
Well Oxygen is also toxic.
Just ask any SCUBA deep diver.
Has April Fool date been moved? Or is this another article from the Onion? There seems to be no other explanation for the idiocy. I just loved that “30% more acidic” touch. They can pseudo-science with the best of them.
[snip WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY OFF TOPIC -you should know better – Anthony]
Oh, I’d loooooooooooooooove to know what Vuk had to say. I bet its Ph was pretty low.
Working out will soon be banned due to increased respiration. Only one child per family, the rest will be exterminated so that they do not exhale that evil toxic CO2.
I am already banned from working out. I made an “ummpff” sound when I was doing leg presses. That got me banned. Ummpff is a noise you make when you exhale while under physical stress, like working out. I thought it was the nannies who get nervous when men exert themselves. It must have been the GREEN nannies who didn’t like the poison I was emitting.
My garden begs to differ with that. So does a nearby bush and a few trees too.
Heaven help us.
Then they can list water as a toxic substance. That is the other toxic product of the combustion reaction after all.
Don’t forget the high toxicity of Oxygen!
Shhh, be quiet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
Actually yale.edu posted an article by carl zimmer in 2010 that says AGW might eventually cause a catastrophic loss of oceanic O2. I highly doubt this will happen.
That AND if it gets above 21% many combustible items might go up spontaneously
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image253.gif
At the least with an environment that is slightly more oxygen rich, combustion can be caused easier
So Lets ban increasing Oxygen
The FDA have been warning people for years about the toxic risk from oxygen bars (sic).
Was that about the gasses that compromise the earths atmosphere? Gee whiz. One day you can light a smoke and the next you can vaporize the whole planet if you do. What is the world coming to? Tell me when the level of toxic and deadly co2 reaches the combustion ratio.
Actually, if someone drinks too much water it results in “water intoxication”…I am surprised they haven’t found it (and everything else) to be a toxic substance already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
Didn’t you realize H2O is also a nasty solvent. It will dissolve almost everything too. BAN IT!
That nasty DiHydrogenMonOxide
See the Penn and Teller Bull$hit episode on this. Or perhaps it was John Stossel.
Don’t forget its common isomer: Oxygen DiHydride. (things could go bang with all those hydrides around).
That hydroxylic acid is bad stuff too!
Too much water will kill you. So will too much salt, too much oxygen, too much food. Yet all of these are NECESSARY for life.
It is the dose that makes the poison, and current CO2 levels are still way below the levels at which the earth was at its greenest and most verdant. We need more CO2, not less.
Water is toxic! Pure water is one order of magnitude more acidic than ocean water (if they consider moving to a lower PH “acidification.”
This has got to be a spoof right? Three months late for April 1st.
Even the name of the author has to be made up surely.
Can anyone write this without laughing out loud?
Steve T
I have no doubt EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, her staff, and the CBD have been colluding via private meetings and private emails on this petition for sometime in preparation for the US Supreme Court tossing out their mercury rules. It is how they have been operating since Obama took over and his political operatives moved into the appointed positions. The US Congress is about to cut the EPA’s budget by 8% next year. I would have cut it about 40%.
I don’t think cutting it 100% would be out of line. We have to recoup all those funds that were wasted on this climate change nonsense.
So, if plants take in this toxic substance, it must make them toxic. We’ll have to ban plants as well.
Einstein said he knew of only two infinite things, the universe and human stupidity.
He was an optimist.
He was not sure about the universe.
All plants will have to be arrested for possession and use of a toxic substance. Rehab centers are being set up around the globe.
“So, if plants take in this toxic substance, it must make them toxic. We’ll have to ban plants as well.”
My son is way ahead of you. He refuses to eat the things.
My elder son’s reason for not eating green veg when he was 6 was that green was the colour (spell check doesn’t like the correct spelling how quaint) of ill people and you don’t eat them!
James Bull
Good thinking.
CO2 a “toxic substance”.
To what? Plants? Algae? Animals? People?
We now have lead-free brass because of California-style regulatory nonsense. Are we now going to have a CO2 free atmosphere?
This “screams” to reminded of this:
http://www.dhmo.org/
I must be dead. I have seltzer from my Sodastream every night. With extra toxic Zionist CO2.
Just arrived in Anthony’s lovely town of Chico on our way from Washington state to Sacramento. Going swimming at Bidwell park with the family. I use to come here often as a kid when my great grandma lived here.
Good to be in a place where there is good science nearby.
Cheers Anthony!
“Harm from ocean acidification is already observable: It has killed billions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest;”
“CORVALLIS, Ore. – The bacteria that helped cause the near-ruin of two large oyster hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest have been mistakenly identified for years, researchers say in a recent report.
In addition, the study shows that the bacteria now believed to have participated in that problem are even more widespread and deadly than the previous suspect.
Although the hatchery industry has largely recovered, primarily by better control of ocean water acidity that was also part of the problem, the bacterial pathogens remain a significant concern for wild oysters along the coast, researchers said.
For many years, it had been believed that the primary bacteria causing oyster larval death in the Pacific Northwest was Vibrio tubiashii. Now, scientists say that most, or possibly all of the bacterial problem was caused by a different pathogen, Vibrio coralliilyticus, a close cousin that’s now known to be even more virulent to Pacific oysters.
The findings were published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, by researchers from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Rutgers University. The research was supported by the USDA.”
I think it is important to go back to original source data when extraordinary claims are made about death and destruction from a political poison like CO2. Otherwise, we may not understand why some researchers are not truth tellers.
I’m always getting those two mixed up.
Well just change the name to something like A or b and that will fix the oyster problem.
For the record, I think that eating oysters is a total waste of time, unless you are a reef dwelling fish like a “sergeant major”.
It’s about equal to the French eating snails. Well come to think of it; why do I care what the French eat ?
Now New Zealand green shell mussels; there’s something really worth eating.
We knew the runup to Paris was going to get interesting.
The oysters were supposedly killed by a bacteria and not CO2, but your article mentioned “better control of ocean water acidity that was also part of the problem”. If it’s the CO2 in the air, how did they accomplish this? Or more likely, what was the local source of another substance that caused the water to become more acidic? There are no specifics as per usual with these activists.
What about the butterfly-like plankton, the pteropods? What is the data on this? Any specifics?
What about the impaired the growth of corals in Florida and the Caribbean. What is the specific data?
Perhaps there are some stories out there on these two points that other readers have heard about?
My guess is that they have no hard data to support any of their claims. But it doesn’t matter because the target of their press releases will never ask the hard questions. If they hear it, they will probably believe it.
We need to educate the children in the proper use of their bullshit meters if we are to win this long term.
Here’s an interesting read from a blog on these oyster larvae deaths.
http://cliffmass.blogspot.ca/2013/11/coastal-ocean-acidification-answering.html
Or more likely, what was the local source of another substance that caused the water to become more acidic?
Think in 3-D: Dredging, dumping, drainage. Acidification is said to have begum ~1750, 100 years before CO2 increase became measurable, and 200 before it became significant.
So one must consider the co-variables.
Marlene Anderson
great article
thanks for the link
Marlene
That was an excellent article.
The only problem is that to refute simple, populist, BS all too often requires a detailed scientific explanation of the facts, a concept which the typical alarmist abhors.
Marlene
Anthony had a post a couple of years ago regarding the problems with the oyster hatcheries in the Pacific NW and a link was included to a report that the problems included that deeper than normal upwelling increased the extent and intensity of intrusions of deep acidic, hypoxic and cooler water. When I tried the link recently, the report had been taken down. So I had to go to the waybackmachine to get it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100706191254/http://www.pcsga.org/pub/science/Emergency_Seed_Proposal_Indesign-1.pdf
Are any of their examples not due to upwelling of cold water?
I am not laughing. We already had Hump-day Hilarity. I hear this crazy stuff and 10 years later … well it is a fact don’t ya know. So this is yet the beginning of more bad news, bad research, bad science, and now, bad religion.
No, this is not funny.
Oxygen is toxic! Join my petition to regulate oxygen! Before it’s too late of course
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
Start by mixing it with 4 parts Nitrogen?
We have been told that CO2 concentrations have varied over time from 180 ppm to 7,000 ppm. I guess at 7,000 toxic parts per million all life died out. Damn shame that happened.
Where do they get these 25,30,35% more acidic claims from? Going from pH 8,2 to pH 8,1 (if true) is less than nothing on a logarithmic scale from pH1-14.
Snorre,
The pH scale is indeed logarithmic, but not scaled over the 1-14 range as you appear to think.
A change of 1 on the ph scale means a factor of 10 increase or decrease in the acidity/alkalinity.
Thus a change of -1/10 on the pH scale is indeed an increase of 25% in acidity.
See http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Chemistry/Acids_and_Bases/Aqueous_Solutions/The_pH_Scale
PS. Don’t bother looking at the pH article on Wikipedia. They have twisted themselves into a pretzel to avoid saying that sea water is more alkaline than pure (distilled) water.
[snip -OTT-mod] Aptly named indeed. H/T Steve T.
The real culprit is oxygen. Without oxygen, no additional CO2 could be formed, and the oceans would be saved from the threat of devastating acidification. I say let’s get the EPA to classify oxygen as a hazardous chemical. Oh, wait – I forgot. Climate alarmists need oxygen to survive (and produce CO2 in the process).
If they weren’t so hypocritical they would ban the oxygen. Death bu holding your breath would be a noble response from them to CO2 poisoning of the world. Let’s encourage this line 🙂
USA! USA! USA! We are in the finals!
England vs. Japan in 3 hours … What? This is not the world cup thread? Well excuse me!
I am thinking all that CO2 being expelled during a match must make the pitch a very toxic place! (see, I did work in a reference to the post at hand)
🙂
Well it’s as relevant as the original “science”. Women’s football is as toxic to sealife as CO2.
And sadly the Lionesses aren’t going to beat the World Champions.
But they’ve done far better than expected anyway.
and all that wonderful CO2 is lost in trying to fertilize True Turf plastic blades
I seem to recall from way back, where some USA lady kickballer got famous by ripping her shirt off after becoming one of the four or five other lady kick ballers who also succeeded in kicking shootout “goals.”
So who remembers the name of the real gold medal winner, who actually won the game, by blocking one of the Chinese shots.
Oh now I remember; she wasn’t a blonde.
Briana Scurry made the save. It’s got to be a major kick in the pants that those pesky yanks can dominate a sport which is their 4th most popular yet the rest of the world treats like a religion. Probably has something to do with the fact that we actually encourage our girls to be athletes.
“…on average the oceans are 30 percent more acidic now than at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.”
I’m genuinely curious. The pH scale wasn’t even invented until 1909, which means that presumably no one was measuring ocean acidity until then. So how do we know the average pH of the oceans before the First Industrial Revolution started in 1790? Or if they are talking about the Second Industrial Revolution, then about 1840?
ye of little faith
“So how do we know the average pH of the oceans before the First Industrial Revolution started in 1790”
Simple. I’d say on average the oceans where 30 percent less acidic at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution than now.. Who need to measure pH, It’s good to be the king.
Actually, if the oceans are 30% more acidic now than they were 200 years ago, then they were about 23% less acidic 200 years ago than they are now.
You need to watch Dr Who.
Di-hydrogen Oxide has killed more people.
Yes, but it doesn’t sound near as scary as Di- Hydrogen Monoxide
And very often has a far lower pH than sea water.
I prefer Hydrogen Hydroxide myself. It’s much more equal; and everything needs to be equal.
Oxidane is scarier.
And it is the real “greenhouse” gas.
The cult of CAGW is searching for a plan B. CAGW does not work as motivation to waste trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work if the planet is cooling.
Ocean surface temperature anomalies indicates the start of large area cooling in the Pacific Ocean, following the same pattern as recent cooling in the Atlantic ocean. The Pacific Ocean cooling started in the far east and is gradually moving west.
Big surprise, the planet abruptly cools when there is an interrupt to the solar cycle.
P.S. Leif are watching the solar parameters? There is now an obvious quarter by quarter change. You also need a plan B.
As TSI has not changed and as the first cooling is high latitude regions (now both poles, no cooling in tropical regions however there will be an end to El Niño events, the past global warming was not global it was high latitude regions), the sun is causing the cooling via an unknown mechanism (not TSI, the sun is not getting hotter or colder) or more accurately a solar change that was inhibiting the solar modulation of planetary cloud cover (low level and cirrus) is now abating.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
Shouldn’t halitosis be a more grievous crime than exhalation?
Perhaps other ‘personal’ greenhouse gas emissions are taxable!
Lovely idea, we should all have meters fitted.
How about a companion charge to DUI of “Emitting extra poisonous CO2 and alcohol vapors while intoxicated”?
I need a vapor trapping and recycling system on my beer–obviously!